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老挝咋成了老窝囊? | 纽约时报

2016-09-09 NYT 英文联播


A rare spotlight is being cast on 
 as world leaders, including , prepare to gather in its capital, Vientiane, for meetings of the , or Asean, and other countries beginning on Tuesday.

本周二始,包括奥巴马总统在内的世界各国领导人准备在老挝首都万象参加东盟即其他国家会晤,罕见地把老挝置于聚光灯下。


A former French colony that gained full independence in 1954,  is one of the world’s few remaining Communist countries. It has long depended on its neighbors , Vietnam and Thailand for investment and political patronage. But that reliance has often put it at the mercy of political forces beyond its control.

这块曾经的法国殖民地1954年获得完全独立,是世界尚存的为数不多的共产主义国家。老挝长期依赖邻国中国、越南和泰国的投资和政治庇护,可依赖往往让其受到各种政治力量的操控,难以自立。


In an interview, Keith Barney, a lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University, speaks about the country’s history and its efforts to balance the attentions of its powerful neighbors.

澳大利亚国立大学公共政策克劳福德学院讲师Keith Barney接受采访时谈到该国的历史,以及如何努力在强邻间取得平衡。


Being a land in between larger powers, how has that affected Laos’s development?

强邻环伺,老挝发展受到何种影响?


This is Laos’s historical-diplomatic strategy: to not be tied too closely to any one patron or protector. Surrounded by Thailand, China to the north and Vietnam — three very powerful countries — Laos’s basic diplomatic interests are to seek alliances with all of them and make sure no one country has hegemonic control.

老挝的历史外交战略是不与任何一个庇护者走得太近。老挝毗邻三大强国,北据泰中两国,东交越南,其基本外交方针是与各国交好,确保哪个国家都不能独霸。


Laos as a nation was of course created out of the French colonial period — they helped to create a sense of Lao nationalism in the early 1900s. Then, at the end of the Second World War, that Indochinese nationalism, which the French created to maintain control over their colonial holdings, turned into an anticolonial nationalism and a territorial nationalism in which Laos was seen as separate from Vietnam and Cambodia as well as claiming independence from France. That was a strong theme in the middle of the 20th century.

老挝是一个创立于法国殖民时期的国家,二十世纪初,法国人推动了老挝民族主义思想的萌发。那种法国人鼓励的印度支那民族主义,本来旨在维持对殖民地的控制,第二次世界大战后,却转变为反殖民民族主义和领土民族主义,老挝被视作独立于越南和柬埔寨的国家,并宣布从法国独立出来。这在20世纪中叶是一个强有力的主题。


As the Communist period developed, Laos was very close with Vietnam. The leadership was trained in Vietnam and was closely allied with the Vietnamese Communist Party. So certainly, since the 1975 revolution, Vietnam has been Laos’s closest political partner. 

随着共产主义的发展,老挝与越南走得很近,其领导层在越南受训,与越共是亲密的盟友。理所当然,1975年革命后,越南成为老挝最亲密的政治伙伴。


But they’ve also had strong economic ties with Thailand, and more recently, China is of course playing a very important role in the country. So I think it’s broadly evident through Laos’s history that they seek to create political and economic connections with all of their different neighbors.

但他们也与泰国有着密切的经济联络。最近,中国也在该国扮演非常重要的角色。因此,我认为在历史上很明显,老挝寻求与各种邻居建立政治和经济联系。


Some think of the Vietnam War as something that happened only in Vietnam. But Laos was an important theater in the conflict, even though the United States did not publicly acknowledge its bombing there. What role did Laos play?

你以为越战只发生在越南,其实老挝也是重要的战区,尽管美国从未公开承认轰炸过那里,那么老挝又扮演什么角色呢?


The Ho Chi Minh Trail was an incredibly important strategic asset for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Minh for flying troops and arms down into South Vietnam. 

胡志明小道是北越南人和越盟至关重要的战略财产,让他们可以将军队和武器投送至南越。


So without the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and without that possibility of moving war equipment and men and materials down through Laos, the war would have played out very differently — and most historians would agree. So that area of Laos was always a strategic area for Vietnam, and they’ve continued to see Laos as part of their geostrategic area of interest.

没有胡志明小道,不能通过老挝把战争装备、兵员和物资送到南方去,战争结果可能会大相径庭,大多数历史学家都同意这一点。因此老挝对越南而言永远是战略性区域,他们仍然视老挝为自己的地缘战略利益区。


That conflict also dovetailed with a civil war in Laos. 

越战与老挝内战同时发生。


Beginning in the late 1940s, early 1950s, the Pathet Lao, the Communists, were drawing most of their young leaders from students studying in Hanoi — like the most famous president, Kaysone Phomvihane — and after the 1954 conflict at Dien Bien Phu, where France lost and agreed to independence for their Indochinese holdings. 

从四十年代末、五十年代初,共产主义政党巴特寮从在河内学习的学生中招募了多数党的年轻领导人,其中包括最著名的主席凯山·丰威汉,1954年奠边府大战中法国失利,随后承认印度支那殖民地的独立。


So the Pathet Lao held these two provinces in the northeast along Vietnam: Houaphan and Phongsaly. These were the Pathet Lao provinces, and then you had the royalists, the U.S.-backed government, holding the Mekong Valley and other provinces. From there, the Pathet Lao, backed by the Vietnamese Communists, basically sought to move Laos into a Communist sphere of influence.

于是巴特寮控制了东北部与越南接壤的两个省:华潘省和丰沙里省。这里是巴特寮的根据地,这时还有美国支持的皇家政府,控制着湄公河谷及其他省份。在越南共产党的支持下,巴特寮逐步将老挝变成变成共产主义者的势力范围。


What does President Obama’s coming visit mean for Laos?

奥巴马访问对于老挝意味着什么呢?


For the government, I think it’s an important visit. My interpretation is that the Lao government also wants to maintain close connections with Western countries. There seems to be some evidence that the recent party congress in January 2016 represented a bit of a shift away from closer connections with China and back towards Vietnam.

对于政府而言,我想这是一次重要的访问。我的解释是,老挝政府也想与西方国家保持密切关系。2016年1月党代会貌似有证据表明,它与中国关系疏远,与越南走近。


I’d be cautious of oversimplifying that; I think Laos in fact tries to maintain connections with all of the different powers, so Laos would have a complex approach to those questions, not simply pivoting from one to the other in an either-or fashion. 

这么说可能有点太过简单化了,我认为事实上老挝想和所有大国保持关系,因此老挝的处理方式很复杂,并非简单地非此即彼。


But part of that is Laos also tries to maintain close connections with countries like Japan, which is still the largest donor in the country, and with Western countries. So in that sense I think Laos would be interested in what a U.S. role in Southeast Asia could look like.

老挝还试图和日本等国维持密切关系,日本仍然是老挝最大的捐赠国,老挝也想和西方国家交好。在那种意义上,我认为老挝对美国在东南亚扮演的角色有兴趣。


It’s a little bit interesting compared to Cambodia, which is seen as being much more closely connected to China. It’s evident in Cambodia’s approach to the South China Sea, where they’ve really been the most belligerent state in terms of blocking resolutions from Asean on the South China Sea. 

将它与柬埔寨相比很有趣,柬埔寨被认为与中国关系很好。柬埔寨对南海问题的态度很明确,柬埔寨人最坚定地阻挠东盟对南海的决议。


Laos is in a difficult position on this issue — clearly they can’t afford to completely alienate China, but they’re taking a bit of a different approach than Cambodia, is my sense. Laos is still trying to argue for resolutions coming out of Asean on the South China Sea, even if they might be very watered-down resolutions.

老挝在这个问题上有点犯难,显然他担不起完全疏远中国,可在我看来,它与柬埔寨的方式不一样。老挝仍然努力支持东盟对南海做出决议,不管这些决议是不是被掺了水。


The Vietnam War — the bombing, specifically — took a huge toll on Laos, and leftover bombs are still killing people in the Laotian countryside. How might Obama’s presence in the country, or whatever he might say there, affect that issue of unexploded ordnance, or UXO?

越战,尤其是轰炸,让老挝伤亡惨重,剩下的炸弹仍然在杀害老挝农村地区的人民。奥巴马来到老挝,无论他会说什么,都会对处理没爆炸的军火(UXO)这一事务产生影响。


It might be a bit less what he says and more the increased amount of aid that could go into UXO removal. It is still a pretty significant issue in many areas of the countryside. In the places where I work and do fieldwork, there are some companies that are doing UXO clearance. But there’s still a huge amount of land area affected by this, so I think increased U.S. support for UXO clearance would also be quite welcome.

他可能不会多说,但会加大援助消除UXO,在许多农村地区,这仍然是个重要的问题。在我实地工作过的一些地方,有一些公司在排雷,但还有大片的土地没人处理,因此我认为美国对排雷给予支持将大受欢迎。


Laos’s rivers, forests and minerals have been, in some ways, a blessing, but also a source of tension over the years. What are the key debates in Laos over how to manage its natural resources?

老挝的河流、森林和矿产得天独厚,但多年来也成为危机之源,老挝该如何管理这些自然资源有什么争议呢?


The most important sector is really mining, in terms of revenues for the government. Something like 40 percent of Laos’s exports are in minerals, and 30 percent of that is copper alone. So the two largest investments in gold and copper mines are pretty strategic areas of interest for Laos.

就政府收益而言,最重要的部门是矿产,老挝约40%的出口产品是矿物,其中30%是铜矿。对金矿和铜矿两种矿产的投资数额最为巨大,关乎老挝的战略利益。


In December 2015, Laos lifted its moratorium on their mining concessions, so that will be an interesting issue to watch, how mining moves forward again. These two companies were quite well managed — they were initiated by Australian companies but taken over by China in the last few years. They’re quite well regulated. There’s also a medium- and small-scale mining sector which has a lot of environmental problems associated with it.

2015年12月,老挝将矿产转让解冻,于是采矿业如何发展大有看头。这两家公司过去管理得不错,它们是澳大利亚公司创建的,最近几年被中国买了下来。他们管理完善,但也有一些中小规模的矿业公司,造成许多环境问题。


In terms of hydropower, with all the controversies over the Mekong River and mainstream Mekong hydropower, Laos has arguably played a little bit of a cynical game in terms of undermining the process enshrined under the Mekong River Commission for the process of notification, prior consultation and agreement. 

在水电方面,湄公河和湄公河干流水电站引发诸多争议,但据说老挝有点两面三刀,暗中破坏湄公河委员会主张的通告、事先协商和同意的原则。


Laos has basically been moving ahead with its two mainstream Mekong hydropower projects without full agreement from its neighbors, and it looks like a third Mekong hydropower project — Pak Beng, backed by a Chinese developer — is the next one that will be started soon. 

老挝在未获邻国完全同意的情况下,推动了两个湄公河干流水电工程,看起来第三个湄公河水力项目Pak Beng也将在一家中国开发商的支持下很快开工。


It really raises questions around what’s the level of political support in Laos for the Mekong River Commission — and for the Western donors to the Mekong River Commission, what their approach should be.

这让人怀疑老挝究竟是不是在政治上支持湄公河委员会,对于援助湄公河委员会的西方人而言又该采取何种对策。


All this becomes quite interesting in terms of China’s new Lancang-Mekong Cooperation forum, which some observers say could be a competitor to the Mekong River Commission, led by China as opposed to Western donors. 

这在中国倡议的澜沧江-湄公河合作论坛上变得非常有趣,有观察者表示这个论坛旨在与湄公河委员会展开竞争,在中国的领导下反对西方捐赠者。


译注:日本在老挝的投资倒是不少,可如今中国也算后来居上……至于美国,美国太坏了,越战的时候把炸弹丢在人家门口,现在掏钱拔雷也算应该的,可这种“西方捐赠”还附带政治条件,例如……支持南海仲裁结果。还真是有点流氓,毕竟作为一个内陆国家的老挝,与南海一毛钱关系都没有。



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